You Say It's My Birthday
by girl undone
Summary: Commander Rachel Shepard finally asks Miranda Lawson a few questions regarding her resurrection. LotSB spoilers. Rated for language.


A/N: Long time, no write. Winter gets me down. I hope it's the block is finally broken, though!

Much thanks to Thessali for reading this one over for me!

* * *

Rachel Shepard was coiled, poised on her balls of her feet, target in sight, ready to strike.

Only she wasn't taking cover behind a handy crate, but rather gripping the squishy leather sofa beneath her. As for the target, it was only the orange holo projection of the time.

23.59

"I hate the colour orange."

Garrus paused in his efforts to change the music queue in his Kuwashii visor and looked to his mate. Concern made his mandibles draw in, but he replied casually enough, "If it bothers you so much, you should talk to her about it."

Rachel didn't look away from the projection. She was silent, as though waiting for something. 0.00 to be precise. "You're right," she replied, much to Garrus' surprise. "I will."

Neither one of them was talking about the colour orange.

* * *

"Shepard?" Miranda asked in a mixture of irritation and shock as the Commander appeared in her room without so much as a warning. The brunette reached for her robe and started to knot it around her waist. "Isn't it rather-"

Shepard cut her off without preamble. "How old am I?"

Miranda's mouth curled up in a smirk. She crossed her arms over the smooth silk of her kimono. "I know your formal education is severely lacking, but surely you can count."

Shepard's hands balled into fists. "Dammit, Miranda, I asked you a question!" She sucked in a sharp breath, held it, then ground out grudgingly, "You're the only person who can answer it."

Normally, the Commander called her 'Lawson', as though to be as impersonal as possible, and, when she did bother to talk to her at all, it was in calm, cutting tones and sarcastic smirks. She made a point that only Miranda herself thought she was XO and never listened to any suggestion or advice the former Cerberus operative might give. But then, Shepard didn't normally barge into crew quarters in the middle of the night cycle, nor did she ever appear outside her own quarters fully dressed and makeup carefully applied.

Miranda's smirk wavered as she took in Shepard's haggard appearance. The dark, bruise-like smudges under her eyes, the oversized tee shirt and washed-out shorts she presumably slept in. Her bare feet. Finally, she relented. "Why don't we sit down?" she offered, gesturing to her couch.

Miranda had expected Shepard to protest, but the Commander was full of surprises tonight. She sat, not in her normal and rather aggressive sprawl, but tucking her legs underneath her and crossing her arms. "This used to be my room, you know. Minus the civilian luxuries." The brunette smoothed down her robe as she sat, formulating a reply, but Shepard locked her steely, if exhausted gaze on her. "So. What is it? I was twenty-nine when I _died_," her normally collected voice cracked over the word. "So was I thirty-one when you decided to wake me up? How long was I technically 'meat and tubes' as Taylor so delightfully put it?" Her mouth twisted in a grimace of disgust.

Miranda wrinkled her nose, then sighed inwardly. _Jacob never had any tact_, she thought as she ran her hands over her lap again, fussily. Without looking at the other woman, she asked in the cautious voice one uses around a dangerous animal, "Why are you suddenly so interested, Shepard?"

She felt Shepard's gaze burning into her. "Because it's April 11th."

Miranda mentally cursed herself. Of course. It was Shepard's birthday. If Kelly's notes were anything to go by, the Commander hadn't taken too kindly to her costly resurrection, nor the expensive upgrades that came with it. If she already hated Cerberus for Akuze and all those unfortunate cells she came across in her hunt for Saren, it was nothing compared to the utter contempt she now held for the operation, The Illusive Man, and Miranda herself. Finally, she looked up at Shepard and spoke, not unkindly, if a bit stiltedly. "You were... out for quite some time. When you were finally..." Miranda paused, searching for a word that didn't sound make it sound as though she were the epitome of Shelley's Dr. Frankenstein and failing utterly, "... revived, we had a hard time keeping you comatose. In fact, you came to more than once. Far sooner than you should have."

Shepard laughed rancorously; a sound that grated on Miranda's ears. "I always thought that was part of the nightmare." Her voice was as bitter as her laugh, but filled with disbelief. Miranda looked up to see her raking a hand through her hair and moving to rub the back of her neck. Inadvertently, the two women's eyes met and the once-head of the Lazarus cell reflected inwardly on how hard it was to achieve her former subject's elusive eye colour. Much like the woman herself, her recessive genes were aggressive and stubborn, oppressing the ones that should have been dominate.

Miranda blinked, despite the fact she knew Shepard would see this as a sign of weakness from her. She had to clear her head and concentrate. But the Commander did indeed jump at the opportunity to spit more questions at her. "So why couldn't you at least fix _that_? Let me have some goddamn sleep. Was that part of the plan of keeping me just as I was, minus the liver that can take poison and ryncol, or the biotic amp I don't want or need! Would it really have troubled you, in all your attempts to upgrade whatever the hell you thought was wrong with me before, and told my brain to shut the hell up for at least four hours a night?"

Miranda willed her fidgety hands to be still. She had seen Shepard angry. It was in low, clipped tones. She had seen her yell, irritated and overwrought from the heavy burden on her shoulders and seeming indifference the universe showed to the Reaper threat. Yet she hadn't heard her like this. There was a hint of hysteria creeping into the Commander's voice. Miranda wondered when last Shepard had actually last slept. "We had to keep your memories intact," the brunette began quietly but firmly. "You had to be you. Emotionally." She took a deep breathe and, for the first time since Commander Rachel Shepard awoke with a biotic amp, Lawson prayed to any deity who would listen that Shepard still only bothered to learn how to throw up a barrier and mulishly refused to even try anything else. Finally, she steeled herself and explained, "Your insomnia is psychological. It's the reason Dr. Chakwas couldn't medicate it previously. Your brain activity simply broke through the sedatives. Now, combined with your 'upgrades' as you like to call them, your liver does indeed break down and process medications faster than before."

There was that awful laugh again. Miranda exhaled and then inhaled again sharply, but a quick glance showed that indeed Shepard couldn't even flicker a trace of blue in her anger. Before she could think of what an exorbitant waste that amp was, the Commander demanded, "So you spent two years resurrecting me and you couldn't even keep me out properly because you wanted all wonderful fucking memories intact?"

Miranda clenched her jaw for a instant. It was late and she didn't need to be bothered like this. She met Shepard's eyes defiantly. "Yes. Perhaps speaking to Yeoman Chambers would help."

Shepard smirked at Lawson's reacquired spine. "Right. If real professionals couldn't help, why shouldn't I be cured by a girl who got her psychology degree off the extranet?"

Miranda opened her mouth to retort something back, but sighed. Kelly was highly skilled, but her personality and methods would never gel with Shepard's. Instead she crossed her arms, not looking away. "Is that all, then, Commander? It's rather late and I don't see any benefit to this furthering this conver-"

"Can I have children?"

Miranda's eyes went wide in astonishment. She instantly wondered if Shepard knew about her own condition. _Surely she wouldn't ask if she intended on being with a turian. And how had she ended up with that turian? Hadn't The Illusive Man picked Jacob to be aboard the Normandy to fill Alenko's place? Nothing in her extensive files suggested a want or desire for a cross-species relationship._ Frazzled, Miranda sputtered, "Not with _him_, no!"

Shepard's eyes narrowed. "I'm not as much as a moron as you'd like to believe, Lawson. And 'he' has a name. Garrus saved your ass- all of our asses- on more than one occasion, never mind at the Collector's Base, and it would do you service to remember that!"

She glared at her Commander. Aware she was often called an ice princess, her cool exterior melted in anger. "_I_ could have just as easily led the firing squad, but as usual, you didn't take my advice. You've never taken my advice. You hate me and I don't know why! For bringing you back to life? Was that such a terrible thing? What did I ever do you, Shepard?"

The Commander's jaw was tight, as though to keep her words at bay, but shaking ever so slightly. Eventually, she muttered, "I don't hate you."

"Then why do you treat me like something found on the bottom of your boot on Omega?"

"Because you know-! You know _everything_ about me! Things I'd never tell you! Things I'd never tell- Things I want to myself! Isn't it enough you've literally seen me inside and out? Do you have to know every little thought that ever passed through my head, too?"

The two women stared at each other, breathing heavily, like two varren circling each other in a pit. Miranda remembered how she kept so much information from Shepard even whilst saving her sister, despite the woman risking her own life to do it. Something she didn't have to do, yet something she did for all her crew-members. How she stayed her hand so she wouldn't shoot Niket and regret it. How she never asked exactly who her father was. How she easily brushed off the detail that Miranda hadn't let on Oriana's true age until her hand was forced. It was the former Cerberus operative who spoke first. "No, no I don't. I don't understand you at all. Yes, I have stacks of datapads about Commander Shepard. My world revolved around Commander Shepard for two years. But I don't understand the first bloody thing about you. You're the same Commander Shepard that's in all those datapads, but this woman sitting across from me now... I don't know her at all."

To Miranda's amazement, Shepard's gaze dropped to the hands she was flexing. She nodded, but said nothing. As the silence stretched, Lawson shifted uncomfortably. But then Shepard spoke. "You know, we've never talked about it. I mean, he's never asked and I've never brought it up, but..." And then the Commander looked up. "There are a lot of good kids who need homes. Is it really that different to love someone you invited in than one that grew inside you?"

Miranda flinched. She didn't know how Shepard knew, but she also recognised the sudden shift in her voice. The same kindness when she urged her to talk to Oriana. Blue eyes met those of cybernetically enhanced but still damned sure to be a motley of grey and green. "No, I suppose not."

With that, Shepard unfolded herself from the couch and stood up. "I should let you get some sleep."

Miranda rose as well, fussing with her robe again. She realised they would never be friends, but perhaps they could learn to respect each other. Or at least keep each other's secrets. "Thirty."

Shepard's head tilted in confusion and Miranda couldn't help but think how very turian the expression was. She shrugged off the thought. "I'd say you're thirty."

Commander Rachel Shepard's mouth twisted in a faint, wry smile. "Well, it could be worse, I suppose." She stretched out a pale hand- Miranda cursed that blue undertone specific to Eastern European peoples who had long ago bred out of it for being another damned recessive gene- and flexed the callused and scarred, but generally unlined appendage. "I could look it, too."

Miranda allowed herself a little smile and shook her head. "Good night, Shepard. And happy birthday."


End file.
